


He Saw Her

by 13letters



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergence, End Game, Epilogue, F/M, Friendship, Happy Ending, Missing Scene, Nightmares, Pining, Season 2, The Iron Throne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 03:45:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11477943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: "Well, what?" he challenges lightly. "Gonna tell them all to hells with the law? Leave the Night's Watch to what?""To go home," she answers, drawing up her knees to hug them for added warmth. "That's what I'll do.""Well, then you haven't got much sense," he tells her softly. "That's a right stupid plan.""So was sneaking into the King's Hand's tourney."





	1. The Whisper

"I saw him that day on the Steps. The traitor King's Hand," Lommy says now that night's gathered and their watch is half-begun: threadbare blankets fought over and sniped from someone else's shivering shoulders, a fire crackling out, winter beginning to spread and spread the further north they go.

It makes this evening impossibly colder; it makes her cheek sting since she can still feel the back of Yoren's hand against her skin.

Last night when this ghost story circulated again and she had uttered the words _he wasn't a traitor_ so similar to the words _I want to go home_ like she could command it, like if the talk of Robb as King in the North makes her a princess, then distance is just a circle, time this infinite loop of repetition that just _hurts_ her more than she ever considered -- her father _died_ and she can hardly breathe some nights this wolf howls in her head --

She had said, "He wasn't a traitor," with her cracking, broken voice and her watery eyes, and Yoren had heard it. Smacked her in warning 'cause if any of these boys should know, dear _gods_ , they'd already lost Benjen and now Ned. He wasn't about to be responsible for the sweet little lady's death, not when he can do all he can to see her protected and safe.

"They said his head just kept rolling and rolling down the stairs."

"No, no, I saw it," this boy with a shiver in his throat corrects. "The executioner had to hit him again and again. Took near nine tries to get the traitor's head clean off."

"I heard he pissed hisself 'fore they stuck the sword in him."

"Shut up, Lommy."

"It's what I heard!"

"I saw him," says Gendry, real quiet and real sudden and at once bringing silence to the whole lot of them.

Maybe it's since he can tell that look on her -- his, she's Arry now, _get it right_ \-- face like the nightmares that keep him up, too. Maybe he already suspects the boy orphan Arry's actually a girl, but maybe he's just remembering, as well, how the man who came to question him didn't seem nothing like a traitor. He just seemed kind and sad and solemn and stalwart. Honorable even until the last, but he doesn't say he's heard that's what killed Eddard Stark. Perhaps they already know it.

"The day they killed him?" asks Hot Pie first. "What was it like?" He's already told them all he was there at the front of the crowd, though, screaming with the mass when the sword fell. Lommy even kicks him for it, for lying, so he sits up and glowers through the dark. " _Ow_. Did his head really roll down the steps?"

"I wasn't talking about then," Gendry says.

"Then what? What do you know, stupid armorer's apprentice? You saw him come in to by a neck guard, did you? Pity it didn't help."

It's then she -- he, gods _damnit_ (nothing was supposed to be like this; there was to be mercy, and then maybe her father would be taking this walk to the North with her, be under this threadbare gray blanket with her since Robb and his vengeance and the old gods' justice have brought winter here sooner, where they'd all be better and _safe_ once more in Winterfell -- King Joffrey _promised_ ) --

"You alright?" Lommy asks Arry with his face all screwed up in a sneer. "You crying or something? You miss home?"

"Don't know why since none of us were wanted at home. Good riddance, I just say," says this one who hasn't quit talking for whole days, "fare we well."

" _Thee_ well, you idiot."

And Arya can hardly breathe all over again. "I'm cold," is all she thinks to say, heart just. Just tearing straight in half; Yoren was right. No one cares much for an orphan boy, so as quick as she drew attention, quicker still they all went back to ignoring her.

"We're all cold. Stop whining," Hot Pie gripes. "Tell us more about it, Gendry."

"I saw him with his family at the tourney," he answers smoothly. As if it isn't anything at all, he stands up real careful, shakes out the twigs and the dirt from his blanket.

Lommy just snorts. "What were you doin' there? Is that why your master gave you up, you never did your work?"

"I was only there for an instant," Gendry frowns. "And I wasn't all that close. Just.. just right time and place and all, y'know?"

"No," sulks Hot Pie.

Gendry doesn't give Arry a glance as he nears that tree she's leaning up against. He doesn't say anything about it either and never, ever will even if they don't know that yet -- how much time they _do_ have, but she can feel the heat of his body almost instantly. When he sits next to her -- him -- and rests his own blanket mostly over her legs.

It's so kind that she could cry, just won't _here_ where some snores already drift to their ears. And she can't bring herself to even thank him for this in any way that matters, so she.. she just stares at nothing, presses her cold hands together and tries to not think, _think_ about the way Sansa had screamed. At Baelor and the tourney.

"You saw the daughters, too?" Lommy wonders after a minute. "I heard he had girls with him."

"I heard the eldest is the prettiest girl in the Seven Kingdoms."

"I don't know," Gendry sighs. He's frowning, she can tell.

"You don't know? You saw them or you didn't."

"I didn't stare or nothing," he snaps, suddenly so defensive that three boys around them snigger. "But I saw them. I saw her."

"I would have. I would have given one of them my token right there. Married myself a Stark, I would have."

"The ladies give their tokens to Knights," she can't help but correct. It's only less plaintive, more snark. Less fierce, though, 'cause gods, she's still shaking.

"What do you know of it?"

"I'm not an idiot," she reasons. "I know how it works."

"Do you?"

"All you do is contradict people," interrupts Gendry calmly. He must've felt her tense, and they don't need anymore fighting between them. "Why don't you keep quiet 'till you can think of something better to say?"

"I beg your pardon? _Bastard_ ," the git calls him. "At least I've got a father then, how about that?"

"All the good it'll do when you take the Watch's vows," Arya points out, voice hard. "You're the one losing things," she says next. Since it reminds her just a little bit of Jon, how a bastard can do well on the Wall, how -- how all the best boys seem to be bastards, too, 'cause Gendry.

Gendry.

 

.

 

"Can you tell me more about it?" she -- Arry -- asks him much later when the sky is still this vast, dark nothing.

He doesn't startle, not really, but his arm does move against hers, surprised. "I thought you were sleeping."

"With this lot snoring?"

Just _barely_ from what she can see, he smiles. "More about what, then?"

"The tourney," she murmurs, voice so low. "The.. the traitor. Stark."

"He was just sitting there with his daughters," he shrugs, shifting just the slightest bit to look down at her. "That was it. Why?"

"What were they doing?" she insists, almost sounding so petulant that it might be the breaking point. She can't tell him _why_ , _of course_ not since pretense is this futile thing where secrets cost the dead, but. It was only a few weeks ago that she and Sansa and Father were a family. She'd like to hear about it.

"He was sitting on the right, then the youngest daughter, then the oldest," he tells her softly. "I think the -- I think the girls were cross with one another."

"They likely were," she agrees.

Like her voice is cracking, like he said he hadn't been staring but both sisters had been seen by every man within three miles; he isn't a fool, but he won't say he was smitten or anything because that would be ridiculous -- his gaze only lingered for a second.

And it's the most profound dramatic irony, really, how he thinks anyways that princesses just couldn't wed blacksmiths, so why hold onto the memory at all? If he even is, Arya doesn't know. It might be the first real lesson in letting go or holding on so tight her fingers could break. They both have to run from the past for a reason.

"The girl in the middle stood up to see better. She seemed this tiny thing but interested in the archery, I think."

"Why?"

"She didn't lose focus," he says. "There were the cheers of the crowd but she only seemed to watch the archer's bow arm. She seemed to glare a little as if thinking she could do better."

"She could have," she says like she's admitting it. Her sigh is the quietest thing. "I bet she could have."

Maybe Gendry's looking her in the eye. It's honestly too dark to tell. "I bet she could have, too."

"Was there --" Gods, she has to clear her throat. "Was there anything else?"

"Her father stood up next to her," he murmurs. "Then the -- the whole crowd, they all stood, and I had to walk on."

"Do you think she noticed you?" she can't help but wonder. She knows the answer, of course, but him.

"What? A pretty, little highborn thing notice me? Surrounded by tens of hundreds of people all more rich, more -- more appropriate?"

" _What_? Says who?"

"If you two don't shut up," Hot Pie threatens in a sleepy huff.

"Oh, go back to sleep."

"Says the law, Arry." _Arry, is that even your real name? Or do you have some girl's name?_

"The law isn't everything," she gripes, tugging the blanket up under her chin. The law's the reason they're here, that she's only got her lady mother left in the way of parents.

"It is where we're going."

She scrunches her nose. " _Well_."

" _Well_ , what?" he challenges lightly. "Gonna tell them all to hells with the law? Leave the Night's Watch to what?"

"To go home," she answers, drawing up her knees to hug them for added warmth. "That's what I'll do."

"Well, then you haven't got much sense," he tells her softly. "That's a right stupid plan."

"So was sneaking into the King's Hand's tourney."

"I didn't sneak," he huffs, elbowing her -- him -- under the blanket. "But alright. We've got enough poor sense to see ourselves the only ones in a tourney, I bet. Would you joust or choose a bow?"

 _A bow_ , she's so close to saying. And maybe he knows it, for he nods without her really vocalizing anything.

It's just. It's just dark and getting darker, and if they don't sleep any before dawn, the travel tomorrow might kill them before one of these other fools gets the idea to.

So _good night_ , he tells her, so this interaction can fade to inconsequential nonchalance, too. He moves all broad shoulders to get more comfortable against the trunk of this tree, sorta just.. just continues to gaze up at nothing, helpless and angry and hopeful and scared, "I hope you don't dream," he murmurs. With all his lungs sighing.

She has to close her eyes. "You, too, Gendry."


	2. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years like days, and he was at the forge just as he was a winter ago -- he _remembers_ \-- when the Lord Varys came to him and let Mott barter his soul for a few pieces under the pretense of protection in indentured servitude: vows taken to the Night's Watch, "Last we met, my friend," Varys spoke to him. "You were leaving to serve the realm."

He can barely remember it now, the high summer sun bright with the promise of winter. The hard earth and the scratch of cheap, threadbare blankets, the gnawing feeling of hunger and the amount of days he used to be able to go hungry.

( _Seven_ , so there's the motif because he hasn't lived to a fairy tale's _three_ of wishes and sunsets paramount to a kiss yet, he hasn't known the grandeur and the magic of it, not really.)

It's difficult to remember how cold it could be, how blue eyes can get when the dead would rise like graves walking, like Lady Brienne thought the dead had walked again when she called him _Renly_ , so if life is measured in the brief moments of impact like the red comet in the sky, the blood of kings and the fiery breath of dragons.

It doesn't become poetic justice. Or any justice at all. It doesn't even come to be about revenge. He won't remember where he is when dreams break like hopes can, when.. when Brienne learns that there isn't any honor in killing. That life doesn't really go like a song, _the sword or the noose_ , she had to watch her Ser Jaime die like she once thought he deserved and then couldn't stop crying when her years' old spite was enacted right before her eyes. "Stand tall, darling," they say he said before they broke his neck.

They say it was honor that had Brienne leaving Lady Stoneheart in search of the Stark daughters, but it was honor that brought her and Podrick Payne back empty-handed, had her crying _love_ while it was honor with which Jaime gave his own life for them, too. But it was with the word _mercy_ they say the Lady was killed.

All Catelyn had ever wanted was for her children to be with her. In the end, she got it, and in the end.

When Daenerys brought her dragons north of the Wall and meant to deliver on her promise to save her people, it was everything she never believed of Viserys when he spoke of it. The prophecy, the dragon banners, the smallfolk shouting her name like a continent away they once declared her _mhysa_.

Gendry doesn't remember where he was the precise instant salvation became a pale-haired woman astride a winged beast dark as night and black as burning embers.

Just when she fell, he doesn't know, but it was after the dead had burned like flames of victory on each castle against the Wall. One last crusade that wasn't quite justice, neither, as she really thought she'd live to be Queen.

She didn't.

They say it was a friendly hand, her nephew's hand, perhaps, that took her life. There are always stories of it, he knows and learned years ago; for all he knows, it was the cold that killed one of the only two Targaryens in the world. For all he knows, there were just more important things to her than the conquest. It is what Jorah used to tell her.

He isn't sure when they say Lord Petyr Baelish was found dead either, but he thinks it might have been when they quit calling Sansa _Alayne_ , when to win this game. You live or you die or you _die_ , and he won't ever forget it.

When they told him the Lady Arya of House Stark was married to the Bolton bastard.

He remembers the meal at the Inn that day. He remembers how he burned his hand of his own stupidity, the red against his wrist, the only flicker of pain so profound he _screamed_ as he beat at the anvil, as he remembered each word she ever spoke to him.

Years like days, and he was at the forge just as he was a winter ago -- he _remembers_ \-- when the Lord Varys came to him and let Mott barter his soul for a few pieces under the pretense of protection in indentured servitude: vows taken to the Night's Watch, "Last we met, my friend," Varys spoke to him. "You were leaving to serve the realm."

"I didn't have a choice in that."

"I could pretend you do now," the Eunuch tutted, gesturing to all this, the inn, this graveyard of a continent, with his mourning black sleeves. Black for a Targaryen, black for a Baratheon. "Would it make this any easier?"

"I suppose not."

Since it wasn't Tyrion that killed his sister. It wasn't even Jaime as minutes had made him younger and irony had made him pristine. They say it was a dog that attacked her, but there are always the stories.

"I'm asking you to serve the realm again," Varys had said, only he spoke it in that diplomatic way that was a tactic order; say what you will.

But the subtleties of politics weren't lost on Gendry, not even then.

To be fair, though, not much changes. From the Sands of Dorne to Snow in the North, across the entire reach of the continent, they bow to the Stag and he tries not to _hate_ how this is nothing he wanted while simultaneously being everything he would never sometimes dream of.

He knows he can never outlaw hunger, but the Lord Samwell of House Tarly in the Reach, he works with the Crown to see people fed through spring and the starts of summer: wagons of meat, vegetables, and wheat.

He knows which advisors he trusts and which ones he doesn't.

The first he meets the Lady Olenna Tyrell, however, she honestly rolls her eyes and simpers, says _grief, but you look like Renly, don't you?_ and he's still haunted by legacies larger than his own life, too.

It takes him two and a half weeks to learn the courtesies required of social delicacy, when to nod. Mostly when to never kneel; it's three weeks when a member of his Kingsguard, Brienne, finds him on the Street of Steel in that shop he hadn't visited for years. With his crown of antlers laid to rest on an old straw cot he used to sleep in, with the steel singing almost as loud as he had screamed with it.

Four weeks, and he burns the smith shop to the ground, and when he comes back smelling of ash and soot, one of his guards is holding someone down just beyond the gates.

"He means to insult you, Your Grace," he was given in way of explanation. "He claims to know you, Your Grace."

And true or not, he wouldn't have a soul treated like this on his palace steps. Even as something burned like recognition and hurt like a years' old wound, "We'll have words about how you handled this," he answered before looking down to quite possibly the fattest man the Seven Kingdoms had ever seen, " _Seven hells_."

"I told you," Hot Pie insisted to Vake's white cloak, "I do know him, right, Gendry?"

"You will address King Gendry as _Y_ _our Grace_ ," Brienne interjected faithfully, by his side in an instant.

"It's alright," Gendry insisted as he hoisted Hot Pie up from the ground by his arms, as recognition seemed to dawn on Brienne, too. The boy who wouldn't shut up about gravy. "What can I do for you, old friend?"

"I'm here to cook."

Five weeks, and Davos falls to his knees when His Grace asks him to be the King's Hand. He swears his words, and oh, these bastards of Flea Bottom. Who knew?

Six weeks, and he hasn't learned much in his Small Council meetings aside from how unprepared and unfit he is to rule. Varys is patient. He's always kept faith, after all, and Brienne is stoic and decisive. Tyrion Lannister is contrite and penitent -- there are some things he won't ever forget, too, and one of these is to be listened to.

 _You aren't truly my nephew_ , he tells him, _but I like the look of you. You've got a good head on your shoulders. I'll see that you keep it._

When Lady Olenna becomes one of the most trusted souls on his Council, though, he isn't sure.

It's the seventh week that he takes only Brienne and Podrick and walks the streets of King's Landing like he used to. Perhaps it's irony that he finds the crown heavy, but Tyrion assures him that it's best he does. He begs His Grace to at least be discreet, but Olenna chides him not to fuss -- it might be good for the smallfolk to see their King out and around their city. They tell her he was one of them, besides.

It's then he supposes he doesn't recognize her face since he's spent more than four years believing she was dead. The North's forgotten Princess, the Wolf's daughter laid in the only grave that could keep her. Cold, frozen earth and winter winds and a memory rekindled.

Robert forgot Lyanna's face, after enough time. And Gendry had begun to forget the cut of cheekbones so stark on her face that he swore they'd properly kill him the day they came in. He forgot the exact gray like ice in her eyes, and he forgot the tenderness, mostly, that stilled this fight inside him like a coasting shipwreck or a mountain taking root inside his chest.

He says he wants to eat at this run-down tavern in Flea Bottom because he's always wanted to. Back when he was much too poor to afford meat that wasn't a rat or a stray dog, he only ever dreamed about a meal here despite now being vastly too wealthy to endure it. He might mean that he doesn't want to forget where he came from, but either way.

Brienne and Pod follow him in and mostly every patron they see bows before the rightful and one true King of Westeros. He tells them what he can remember while they wait for bread and ale -- how he was grateful he at least got to sleep by the smith's fire so his bed was warm if his master heavy-handed. He tells them about the stew and the starving, the bull's head helmet, and Brienne tells him of the evening she first met his uncle, the once-King Renly Baratheon.

The jeers and her gown and the ball. The kindness Renly showed her, but then it's the true mark of loyalty and trust. They all know, in the end, that Brienne was the one who killed Stannis. But nonetheless, Pod tells them of the once he got to pour Lord Tyrion's and Lord Stannis's wine and spilled some on the latter's sleeve, how he didn't fuss or balk or shout or smile or anything.

"I didn't say it was a funny story, Your Grace," he said as he swallowed his ale. Gendry just stared, and Brienne made a long-suffering, affectionate face; yes. She never quite imagined she'd be a mother in this fashion.

And Gendry never thought he'd be King.

The food is so bad that he snorts into the stew and it splatters thinly onto the table. It isn't the trademark symbol of poverty anymore, though, just cheap profit, so if it comes to pass that even the poorest are too wealthy to look here for food, well. At least he's done this; at least he hasn't ruined his chance to better serve the realm as Varys proposed to him that day he paid a golden crown for Gendry's soul.

Seven weeks. "I beg pardon, Your Grace," someone says, and _stupid bull_. He's wiping his mouth with a cloth when she bows, when he looks at her, and perhaps doesn't see anything at all.

Not the North, not a face from Flea Bottom he recognized like he had the child-turned-man leather worker. They had used to fight all through childhood, but earlier today, that man with his red hair and brown eyes had fallen to his knees and wept for this peace at last.

(What Gendry is learning -- what Tyrion reminds him -- is that the people remember well the good his father did as King because he was a decent man if not a worthy ruler. What he's learning from Tyrion is that names are glorified, and his.)

"We've met before, you see," she says, and he doesn't see it. Not quite. "Your Grace," she adds, her eyes cast down. She imitates another seamless bow, perfectly straight back. Perfect form even if he suspects the slightest trace of mockery.

"We have?"

"Yes, Your Grace. Or rather, I saw you at the King's Hand's tourney."

"I'm sure Lord Davos was pleased you attended the festivities in his honor," he assures her with all the good breeding that's been a few months in the making: sincerity genuine.

Lady Brienne pretends not to smile into her mug, and Pod who, like him, has known the merit of a meal regardless of taste, takes another spoonful of stew. He's ready to pull his sword if need be, and has been since he first took a knee.

"It wasn't the tourney for Lord Davos, Your Grace," she confesses just a pitch lower than the other talk around this tavern. Her inflection is clear, as symbolic to him as her eyes that cool and gray, and maybe he does think what _if_ , almost, _if only_ , oh, gods.

"Whose, then?"

"You -- you know whose, Your Grace. I saw you there when they celebrated Eddard Stark."

And perhaps it's irrational, how angry it makes him since how _dare_ she. Pod squints up at her while Brienne stands, and if -- if she's thinking she ought to kneel. If she recognizes those eyes, and she's thinking she ought to kneel, thinking _Jaime, oh_ , they were so close.

"I wasn't there," he responds nonchalantly. "My lady is mistaken."

"Your Grace is a liar." For love stories don't usually go like this. "But your grammar's improved. I remember," she says softly, even though it once hurt to think about. "A boy standing further down, next to a tent with a golden sigil, faces all around him. He was staring, I remember."

"The tourney was a spectacle. Anyone would have stared."

"I did, Your Grace," Pod notes, wiping at his mouth. "I won't ever forget Ser Loras unseating Clegane."

"You weren't watching the jousting."

" _Your Grace_ ," Podrick reminds her.

"Your Grace," she corrects like she could be laughing. Or crying, it's so watery sounding; peace like an olive branch. He once thought he would never leave her, but she was once all a child's anger and a woman's scorn and never wanted to see him again. The seasons changed just as they had. "Do you remember?"

The sunlight and the cheers. The crowd and her even if it's a trick of the light, even if it can't be, _it can't be_ , for she was dead and he was living in dreams; she had been the last he had ever changed his mind, and to see her now in these city streets, in the wood of this tavern like she's been the shadow who's followed him for seven weeks and in sleep.

"You were standing," he realizes so slowly, so hesitantly it's like it's breaking since he knows he hasn't got it wrong, she's here and breathing and _alive_ and he -- he falls to his knees, and his Kingsguard know better than to stop her when she falls, too, eyes so gray and _so_ familiar so suddenly that it burns, "Arya. _Arya_. Your dress was blue."


End file.
